Hank Williams would have been 100 years old on Sunday. Instead he died, on New Year’s Day 1953, at the age of 29.

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Around the turn of the century I made a musical pilgrimage to the tiny Texas town of Luckenbach, once immortalised in song by Waylon Jennings.

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She might not be a household name but Jean Shepard was a pioneer for women in country music, with a staggering 73 singles in the country chart between 1953 and 1981.

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For some musicians, a tragic death elevates a mediocre career to legendary status. But it didn’t work out that way for Cowboy Copas.

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The Rose City Band are the country-flavoured side project of Wooden Shjips duo Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada. This druggy animated road video certainly captures the woozy mood of their laid-back country-fried boogie.

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Not sure if the term Aussie’n’Western is a thing, but if it is then The Paper Kites are a prime example.

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Country veteran Rodney Crowell teams up with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco on a collaborative album called The Chicago Sessions.

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There are few aural pleasures greater than accidentally stumbling across an old song you used to love that had somehow slipped from your memory. That’s what happened this weekend when I found an album comprising the early recordings of Kimmie Rhodes.

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Country music was so uncool in the Seventies that I never went near it in my youth. Until I came across Joe Ely. There was something about his debut album in 1977 that struck the same sort of chord as the ramshackle thrashings of punk. But in an American way – specifically a Texan way.

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Merle Haggard’s self-penned number from 1974 has all the elements of the perfect Christmas song – a sad, sentimental, yet optimistic lyric, and a cracking tune.

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